


Good Ol' Fashioned Thievin'

by whiskeyandspite



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Budding Relationship, Crack, Flashback, Fluff, Gen, Growing Up, Nostalgia, Stealing, raising little peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 07:55:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10917582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: “Thieving’s a knack, boy, it’s an itch. You’re bounding on into it thinking it’s child's play, but it takes time and practice for it to become a life handed to ya on a platter.”“A stolen platter.”Teen-Peter learning how to steal properly.





	Good Ol' Fashioned Thievin'

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SLSmith22](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLSmith22/gifts).



> So Guardians 2 happened, and my love for Yondu woke up, and this is just the beginning of what I hope is a long streak of DENIAL OF CANON STORIES LALALA.
> 
> Written for Staci who knows what's up and who fuels my muse something fierce.

It started with the trolls.

Or the ship. 

No, it definitely started with the ship.

The irony was that Yondu had taught Peter to steal, he had told him to, yet any time Peter found his fingers flexing for practice, he was grounded for it. Or, docked would be more accurate; locked in an escape pod and dangled out over deep space with the threat of the pod being released if he didn’t stop being so blatantly bad at stealing.

At least he wasn’t told he was going to be eaten anymore, as often.

But being docked meant he couldn’t leave the ship; being docked meant he couldn’t even leave the stupid pod to get his walkman or a string to knot without being lectured about what a terrible thief he was.

“How am I supposed to get better if I’ve got no one to practice on?” Peter had whined once, petulant. “You don’t let me do anything!”

“I don’t let you do anything? Boy, you’ve more freedom on this ship than some of the men who’ve been flying it since we picked it up.”

“But I’m stuck on it! You don’t let me go with you, you get angry when I try go alone.”

“I get angry when you hijack my ships.”

“It was just one ship.”

“And it’s one ship less, now, since you crashed it.”

Peter frowned but didn’t argue. He had crashed it. “But I got to it, didn’t I? To the ship, and got it out the gate before you all came after it.”

“Thieving’s a knack, boy, it’s an itch. You’re bounding on into it thinking it’s child's play, but it takes time and practice for it to become a life handed to ya on a platter.”

“A stolen platter.”

Even years in, Peter still had trouble gauging whether Yondu’s laugh was genuine or a mark of impending danger. When Yondu stepped closer, Peter held his ground.

“I tell you what. You show me you can work with your circumstances, on this here ship, and I’ll take you ravaging.”

Peter blinked. Then he frowned.

“But I’ve already -”

“You steal something that shouldn’t be stole,” Yondu interrupted. “Something I’ll miss. You steal it good and you’ll start seeing that platter of yours. But you mess up -” raised brows and a pointed gesture were enough. Peter sighed.

“Docked.” He mumbled.

“Damn right you’ll be docked. TiI you finally learn to get out of there on yer own. Which you shoulda learned by now, the amount of times you’ve been in there.”

There wasn’t a handshake. There didn’t need to be. Deals were made on the ship day in and day out, and anyone stupid enough to make one and break it found the consequences less than pleasant. Honor among thieves and all that. So Peter had watched Yondu go, coat brushing against the metal banisters that were starting to rust, mumbling something about what a pathetic kid he’d picked up.

A week later, Peter had accumulated a fair amount of shiny objects and several gloves in his room, to little end.

If Yondu had noticed, he hadn’t said anything. If he was impressed, he hadn’t shown it. There was still the same teasing lilt in his tone when he yelled orders for Peter to check the boosters or the batteries, there was still that apparent dismissal.

It was frustrating. More than that, it was infuriating. How was someone meant to learn if he wasn’t taught properly? Sure, Peter knew the ins and outs of the ship by heart at this point, having crawled the length and depth and width of the thing through its ventilation chambers since he was seven, and he knew how to reprogram most of the doors on board - excepting the damn escape pods that were on their on circuit - and he wasn’t half bad at piloting a vessel… and sure, that had all been taught to him with curse words that felt more like praise than anything else. But why wasn’t that enough? Why did he have to prove - again - that he had the aptitude to go ravaging when his room filled with scavenged rubbish was proof enough?

He needed to do something extraordinary.

He needed to steal something that shouldn’t be stolen.

He’d considered Kraglin’s notebooks. Tullk’s knives. But while both would be gutsy, they wouldn’t get the attention of the man who was challenging Peter to be better than himself. Both would have the significance of the damn trolls that Peter had no more space in his bunk for.

Peter dejectedly fiddled with one of them, pressing its hair back against its hollow head as he dropped himself into his bed and closed his eyes. Maybe he should just run away, say he stole himself when Yondu inevitably found him again. But it wouldn’t work, clever as the plan would be. Peter wouldn’t be something Yondu would miss if he were stolen, even by himself.

Peter heard footsteps growing nearer, and huffed a breath before pressing a spare pillow over his face as one of the men stomped past his room, whistling, on his way to the john.

The burbling of the ship’s tired engines felt like thunder when he peeled the pillow off his face again, turning his head awkwardly to watch the man disappear through the slit in his doorway.

Whistling.

“The yaka arrow,” he breathed. It was a thing of beauty, a thing of wonder, a thing that hurt like hell when it streaked past you as a warning and left an angry red mark on your hand or neck or face, always brought back, obedient, with a whistle.

If Peter could get that, if he could get away with it, just for a few hours, just til the morning when Yondu would need to use it and find it gone…

It was genius.

It was perfect.

It would be his blood on the yaka, if Yondu caught Peter stealing it.

Still, it was too good to pass up.

Without a word, Peter shoved the troll into his pocket and rolled from bed to dig under it for his boots. He’d need to wait, for when he was sure Yondu would be sleeping, for when he was sure Oblo or Retch wouldn’t rat on him if they were still up. He’d need to wait and look inconspicuous and just… take it. Easy. After all, Yondu didn’t whistle when he slept.

What could go wrong?

-=-

A lot could go wrong. A lot did go wrong, with so many of the ravagers sleeping on the main deck instead of where they usually did, after another late night of hair-of-the-dog self-medication. It was like trying to perform brain surgery blindfolded.

Thrice, Peter had tripped over someone, catching himself against someone else, and immediately rolling into a ball on the floor and pretending to be asleep when disgruntled commotion started up from the disturbance. Twice, his name was cursed, but no radical action taken.

Thankfully, not once were any of those curses drawled in an accent far too American South to be Zatoan.

Peter knew where Yondu was, at least. The captain’s bunk was safe in plain sight, in the middle of the mess of pirates where anyone attempting to steal something, or kill the captain, would find himself immediately set upon. He could see him, too, on his side, with his arms crossed and jacket pulled tight around him. Peter tried to remember if he had ever seen Yondu without his huge red coat and couldn’t think of a time.

Perhaps the clever plan was the worst plan.

So it absolutely had to work.

Once, when Peter had been very young, and had had a bout of terrible nightmares and couldn’t sleep no matter how hard he tried, he’d sat and watched Yondu show him how to pick pockets the old fashioned way.

“Technology’s one thing, boy, but it fails. It’s made to. It’s why we use it so easily - we can manipulate what it does. An’ people fail, just the same. It’s why we can manipulate people into doing whatever we want, just by knowing how they work. It’s all in the misdirection,” Yondu folded a coin into the palm of his hand and opened his fingers to reveal nothing there at all, just a moment later. “We can use all kinds of gadgets to get what we want. But there’s nothing quite like good ol’ fashioned thievin’.”

Peter had spent a month trying to master the coin trick, and it had taken just a week for him to learn to sleep without trouble again.

It took several more awkwardly balanced maneuvers to get Peter to the cot he needed, and then he stood, surprised by how easy it had been, in the end, over the man who had effectively raised him to the little thief he was today. A thief that was about to pull off the heist of the century and live to tell the tale.

Taking a breath, Peter reached, one hand set to the side of the cot, the other stretching and seeking with careful fingers.

“You’ll wake the whole ship breathing so loud,” Yondu muttered, and Peter collapsed on him with a curse, scrambling to drag himself up to standing again, using the small set of shelves for leverage. “You tryin’ to kill me, boy?”

“Nope.”

“Better you had been, if you’re tryina steal somethin’ this badly I’ll eat you alive.”

Back to the eating threats, then.

Peter swallowed, frowned, and with a sigh of resignation dug into his pocket to reveal the troll. Yondu started at it, stared at him, and with a snort rolled over to settle into the cot again.

“With eggs,” he mumbled. “In the morning, cook you up good. Useless.”

Peter resisted the urge to snap back, and instead set the troll to the shelves, amid the mess of gun parts and wrappers, and started to make his way back across the room to the door he’d come in from.

After the coin trick, Peter had really started to learn what misdirection meant. How easy it was to distract someone with something novel or ridiculous, and pull off a simple job right under their noses. His ways weren’t nearly as refined as the ravagers’, but he made it work. It had been one of the first times Yondu had slapped him on the back and smiled that sharp metallic smile of his and Peter had felt that he had made someone proud.

Now, he leaned in the hallway outside his room and pulled the fin from inside his coat. A quick job, and one easily hidden under his fall over the man he had robbed. Peter grinned, turning it in his fingers, and carefully set it to his head.

He’d get the arrow, and he’d have Yondu miss it.

-=-

He practiced. Every free moment he got, Peter practiced his whistling. He watched parties leave for missions and whistled songs, he meditated on the swagger Yondu employed to make his coat flare out behind him as he walked and whistled tones, high to low. He kept the fin hidden safe in the mess of his room and said nothing. Just whistled. Day after day.

Then one day, late enough that jobs were done and the ship was settled close enough to a jump to catch any parties coming back early, Peter snuck to the escape pod and settled into the curve of it, at the very back, where he could see space and nothing else beyond it. Then, with the fin set comfortably to his head, he started to whistle.

The effect wasn’t immediate but it was notable. There was a shuffle, a curse, and then heavy footsteps from the control room. Peter sat in silence as Yondu stormed past the pods, down the hall and out of sight again. Then he peeled himself from his hiding place and made his way to the control room himself, closing the door behind him. With the screens bright before him, flickering parts of the ship for him to observe, Peter licked his lips and whistled again.

The yaka was harder to move than he had anticipated. Yondu had made it look as simple as, well, whistling. But it was far more delicate an operation than that. Every lilt and turn of tone made the thing move a certain way, and worse, Peter’s whistle was nothing to Yondu’s. It became a tug of war, more playful than it was serious. Every time Peter managed the arrow farther than arm’s reach away from Yondu, he would call it back. Every time it careened off around a corner, its true master would stop it before it could hit any unsuspecting pirate. It was a game, in the end, all of Peter’s lessons were, but one that he was determined to win.

After a while, Yondu allowed the arrow to fly further from him, allowed Peter to think himself the victor, watching it move from one screen to another, one corridor to another. But then, inevitably, it would glide gracefully back to where Yondu wanted it. In truth, it was tiring, Peter’s face hurt from trying to keep his lips pursed so long, but he was determined, adamant to prove his worth. The fin wasn’t enough, it was just a tool. What the tool could do was what mattered.

It was the audacity of it, the sheer guts it had taken to steal control from Yondu, of the one thing no one else had ever controlled before. That was the heist.

“Don’t you get too eager, now,” Yondu’s voice sounded metallic through the speakers. He followed the drunken flights of his arrow down one of the halls, hands in his pockets, coat points hitting the railings as he went. “You raise the pitch too much it’ll shoot right through the walls.”

Peter stopped whistling to catch his breath and frowned as on the screen, the arrow righted itself and continued smoothly onwards.

“You got some balls, boy, trying to take the arrow from me.”

“It’s what you wanted isn’t it?” Peter muttered, massaging his cheeks before trying to whistle again. But he’d exhausted himself, tugging the arrow along the endless bridges and ladders of the ship with its master following behind.

“Clever thing when you want to be, ain’t ya?” Yondu grasped the arrow from the air and returned it to his coat, turning to find a camera to look at, pointing at Peter through it. “Use that damn head of yours more and you’ll be a right pirate. Get down here.”

Reluctantly, Peter did, holding the fin in his hand as he jumped the last few steps of the ladder and landed heavily on the bridge below. He didn’t immediately hand it over, however, when Yondu held his hand out for it.

“You promised me a job.”

“I said I’d take you ravaging, never said I’d pay ya for it.”

“Well?”

Yondu considered the boy before him, barely seventeen with a mess of light hair and a petulant pout. His coat was still too big for him, one of Yondu’s he hadn’t grown into yet. Without a word he turned his hand and held it out further, taking Peter’s tightly when he shook it.

“You gonna crash my ships again, boy?”

“I’m going to fly them.”

“You’d best learn to, or I’ll dock you again.”

Peter just grinned, handing the fin over when Yondu reached for it. And he certainly didn’t yelp when the man dragged him nearer by his collar with his other hand.

“And you try take my arrow again, boy, I’ll not even bother cooking you before I eat ya.”


End file.
